Could the Media Turn on Obama?

The entire Power Line team has noted here before (several times , in fact) the similarities (and differences ) between the 1980 election and this year, especially how Ronald Reagan blew open a close race in part because of a strong debate performance. There’s one other parallel that might take shape over the next few days, especially if Obama has another weak debate performance tonight: the media might start to turn on him . This happened in 1980, when the media turned on Jimmy Carter for his campaign mis-steps, especially his “meanness,” that is, Carter’s nasty side that had been known to everyone in Georgia who had seen beneath the smile. That’s not to say the media became pro-Reagan; they weren’t, but the media like a winning “narrative,” and Carter, like Obama, unable to give a compelling account of what a second Carter term would look like, increasingly looked like a ...